News

Four tribal college presidents say their institutions are trying new methods to preserve — maybe even expand — the number of people who can read, write or speak their tribal language…As part of its 2018 summertime language institute, Little Big Horn College decided to compile an Apsáalooke dictionary. Yarlott said he hoped they’d gather definitions for 10,000 words. Instead, they came up with nearly 14,000. (Source: Billings Gazette)

The Crow Language Consortium hoped to document 10,000 words at a recent 10-day session specifically for collecting words from fluent speakers. They ended up with 15,000. The words will go into an online and print dictionary. We’ll learn more about how various tribes are working to write down their languages. (Source: Native America Calling)

“People get really fired up when we do these rapid word collections,” said Mitch Teplitsky, the organization’s communications director. “It’s a fairly new methodology for collecting words… developed by another organization called the Institute for Linguistics.” (Source: Big Horn County News)